SLIDE 2.
Snapshot: something
unusual is happening.
We zoom in on a
ten-thousand-year slice, an eyeblink flicker of geological time.
For millions of years beforehand, the Earth was quiet, its
continents fallen dark in the wake of a huge burping hiccup of
magma that flooded from the junction of the Cocos and Nazca
continental plates. But now the lights are back, jewels sprinkled
across the nighttime hemispheres of unfamiliar continents.
Unusually, they aren’t confined to the surface—three diamond
necklaces ring the planet in glory, girdling the equator in
geosynchronous orbit. And floating beyond them, at the L1 Lagrange
point betwixt Earth and Luna, sits the anomalous glowing maw of an
unusually large timegate.
The natives appear to
be restless . . .